Straw (a fresh draft)

We may, at times, confuse ourselves
with Providence–because
we find ineffable inscrutable as well,
we may confuse
the concepts we deploy for what remains
beyond our grasp, when all has been

Considered, factored in, made subject to our hands’
manipulation–we may think
of Providence as guaranteed returns, as bad
investments surely to be good,
when something makes them so, and not our selves.

We may, in fact, become confused inside,
and think we have become ourselves like God,
inscrutable in our designs, all right
compelling others to be tools, our hands,
in monumental labor without end
assigned, proportioned to the fruit, nor aimed with reason:
bricks without straw.

We may
sink
down
by slow degrees
into irrelevance, our trying feet
caught tangled in the trace we always knew
would prove inscrutable.

Or we may know
How grasses grow around us, may content
Ourselves in sewing patches on the tent
Where simple dishes, homely ways observed,
Transform in sudden splendor at one Word.